The Obama administration again finds itself under pressure to walk away from nuclear negotiations amid concerns that Iran may be backing off its commitments just days before a deadline for agreement.
Talks in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 countries — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — are supposed to result in agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by the end of the day Tuesday.
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That isn’t likely to happen. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif returned to Vienna from consultations in Tehran on Tuesday, a week after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, laid down a list of “major red lines” seen as a hardening of Iran’s position. That pronouncement fueled renewed calls from the GOP for the Obama administration to consider walking away from the talks.
Administration officials have resisted that pressure, insisting they can still get a good deal that would meet their goal of ensuring Iran doesn’t develop a nuclear weapon over the next 10 years and possibly longer.
“The thing that the president has been very clear about is if the Iranians refuse to agree to a framework that’s consistent — or a final agreement that’s consistent with the framework that was reached in April, then there won’t be an agreement. And we understand at this point that that’s something that the Iranians are hoping to avoid,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
Among Khamenei’s “major red lines” laid out in a June 23 speech were no international inspections of Iran’s military sites and the “immediate removal of economic, financial and banking sanctions” on the signing of any nuclear agreement.
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Neutral experts agree that the first condition would make any agreement unverifiable, and the second would become a serious issue for Congress if the administration agrees to that condition, since most U.S. sanctions in that area were imposed because of Iran’s continuing support for terrorism, not the nuclear issue. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeatedly promised lawmakers they would lift only nuclear-related sanctions as part of any deal.
U.S. officials pointedly told reporters in Vienna several times Monday that the final agreement must be based on a framework announced April 2 — “period” — which would not accommodate Khamenei’s demands.
But these impasses in the past have resulted in concessions to Iran, creating the perception that Tehran has the upper hand.
“I actually fear we have painted ourselves into a corner where we feel that any deal is better than no deal right now,” former CIA Director Michael Hayden told “Fox News Sunday.”
In recent weeks, several Republican lawmakers have called for the administration to walk away from the talks to equalize the situation. Supporters of the process, along with some former participants, have also joined in.
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“We’ve heard the president and his senior advisers say countless times over the last 18 months that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal,’ ” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said Monday. “Yet with the clock running out, and far-reaching U.S. concessions in the works, a bad deal is looking near certain. Mr. President, I’ll be the last one to be critical if you walk away from this negotiating table.”
The calendar is adding to the urgency to seal the deal. If Congress is presented the deal by July 9, it will have only 30 days to review it. If the deal comes in later, Congress has 60 days, giving opponents more time to argue against the deal.
The talks are taking place in what Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls an “asymmetry of desire,” which may indeed give Iran an advantage.
“Iran clearly needs this deal,” he told reporters in a conference call Monday. “They’re hemorrhaging hundreds of billions [of dollars] because of sanctions, tens of billions because of the drop in oil prices and billions trying to sustain the Assad regime — but it seems the U.S. wants the deal more.”
Though Kerry has dismissed Khamenei’s new red lines as posturing, Sadjadpour said there’s a chance Zarif could return from Tehran with a mandate to insist on them.
“We’ll see in the next few days whether those were firm red lines or simply trying to strengthen Iran’s bargaining position,” he said.
